A Simple Algorithm for Finding Maximal Network Flows and an Application to the Hitchcock Problem

Abstract

The network-flow problem, originally posed by T. Harris of the Rand Corporation, has been discussed from various viewpoints in (1; 2; 7; 16). The problem arises naturally in the study of transportation networks; it may be stated in the following way. One is given a network of directed arcs and nodes with two distinguished nodes, called source and sink, respectively. All other nodes are called intermediate. Each directed arc in the network has associated with it a nonnegative integer, its flow capacity. Source arcs may be assumed to be directed away from the source, sink arcs into the sink. Subject to the conditions that the flow in an arc is in the direction of the arc and does not exceed its capacity, and that the total flow into any intermediate node is equal to the flow out of it, it is desired to find a maximal flow from source to sink in the network, i.e., a flow which maximizes the sum of the flows in source (or sink) arcs.Thus, if we let P₁ be the source, P_n the sink, we are required to find x_ij (i,j =1, . . . , w) which maximize